Slips Of Tongue Offer Levity In Campaigns

It seems a witty comeback to charges that he's a right-wing extremist.

"Here I am, stuck in the middle with you," Republican Al Salvi tells voters on the campaign trail, invoking the title line from a golden oldie that also talks of "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right."

The only problem is the rest of the ditty, by the group Stealers Wheel, has lyrics that aren't exactly flattering when cast in a political light:

"It's so hard to keep this smile from my face/'Cause I told you I'm all over the place."

And this:

"Trying to make some sense of it all/But I can see it makes no sense at all."

And this:

"Yeah I don't know why I came here tonight/I got the feeling that something ain't right/I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair/And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs."

Encore anyone?

It can be sobering trying to do the people's business. It also can get a little goofy.

Just ask Douglas Mains, a West Chicago physician who is the Democratic candidate in the 14th Congressional District.

In what some might call the ultimate in wishful thinking, Mains' staff issued this press advisory the other day:

Salvi's rival, Dick Durbin, got a bit of an economics lesson Sunday while campaigning with state Rep. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston) at a popular Wilmette pancake house.

One diner stunned Durbin by asking if he didn't think taxes on the rich were too high.

"I've never been asked, `Are you going to lower taxes on the wealthy?' " Durbin laughed later.

"Welcome to the North Shore," replied Schoenberg, whose House district is the wealthiest in the state.

Many a candidate has complained that his or her opponent reeks, but few have done it so bluntly as Betty Hull, the Democrat who is challenging veteran U.S. Rep. Philip Crane in the northwest suburban 8th District.

The two were sitting feet from each other at a Palatine forum the other day when a teen in the audience asked what they would do to discourage young people from smoking.

"I don't have to ask my opponent if he is a smoker," said Hull, a Harper College English professor. "I can smell from here that he is."

Speaking of appearances, Salvi worries that his face looks shiny or pasty on TV. So he's taken to borrowing a few dabs of foundation makeup from his wife before doing televised interviews.

One day last week, however, he arrived at a studio without his own supply. So he pawed through the station's makeup, finally settling on a liquid base called Maybelline Shine-Free.

"I like this," he said, admiring himself in the mirror.

"Perfect. Let's go," said a station producer, eager to herd Salvi into the studio.

He followed, grinning sheepishly. "I hate looking shiny," he said.

Salvi also has a thing about germs--not an unreasonable fear given the number of hands he's been shaking at the start of flu season.

"Oops, that reminds me," he said after a recent fundraiser in Bloomington, reaching into his jacket for a small plastic bottle of blue antiseptic gel. He then slathered the gel onto his hands.

"It's called Steril-Touch," Salvi explained.

Realizing that he was about to launch into what sounded like a product endorsement, Salvi held the bottle aloft and caressed it like a model would.

"When you shake as many hands as I do, you worry about germs," he said seriously. "But with Steril-Touch, I don't have to worry."

The gel was sent to him by a supporter, worried that he would get sick from touching so many strangers' hands. He swears it works. He hasn't gotten sick even once since the gel arrived.